because feminists are inherently interesting

IIIIIII’MMMMM SIIIIIICCCKKKKK and hoo boy can you ever hear it in this episode. Sorry for the garbage voice this weeks folks, and also for the very short episode, but for all my whining and rasping, I’m actually delighted to be sharing with you the new theme for all of our winters: make baby cozy. Coined by former guest of the podcast Baby Groot, this phrase is a reminder to treat yourself with tenderness and care, and to ask for what you need. It’s also tacit permission to baby yourself, to be a baby, to let go, at least for a little while, of whatever kind of hardness adulthood has brought you. As Mary Oliver says, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves.”

Obviously making baby cozy is a close relative of hygge, so here’s a cute little piece about why hygge is a low-maintenance and low-cost form of self-care. (I do not endorse Self, but this piece is nice.)

The podcast theme song is “Mesh Shirt” by Mom Jeans off their album “Chub Rub.” Listen to the whole album here or learn more about them here. Follow me @hkpmcgregor, follow Kaarina @kaarinasaurus, and tweet about the podcast using #SecretFeministAgenda.

Secret Feminist Agenda is recorded and produced by Hannah McGregor on the traditional and unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

Look at this straight up celebrity who totally agreed to talk to me! Amber Nash, the voice of Pam Poovey on Archer and a renowned improviser, joined me to talk about improv and gender, learning how to be body positive from fictional characters, and exactly what time of the day you should take your baths. Other topics include how improv is like psychology, what it means to improvise like a man, and the degree to which playing a character known for saying incredibly filthy things might upset your mother. Amber is delightful! Here are some links!

First, on gender and improv, here’s a three-part series from The Mary Sue on “how funny women navigate gender on stage.” Read them all: part one, part two, and part three.

I finally found the Lupita Nyong’o interview where she talks about motion capture! It’s pretty brief, but it’s in this video.

If you’d like to learn more about the history of Adult Swim and the role shows like Sealab 2021 played in building an audience for adult cartoons, check out this neat oral history.

I tried to find something good to link here about Pam Poovey as a fat icon but literally everything I found was written by a dude; feel free to send me any relevant links and I’ll add them in here!

Finally, I promised to link through to my Sad Christmas Jams playlist, so here it is.

FUN FACT November is my least favourite month of the year for all kinds of reasons, and by the end of this month I’m usually pretty worn down and exhausted (this year being no exception, as the quality of my vocal production in this episode demonstrates). But in this episode, instead of telling you how tired I am, I’m going to tell you about something that I use to nourish my weary self and make sure I’m spending time NOT working. And while we’re at it, Kaarina is bringing you extra cozy vibes and reminding you to stay warm! Links!

The podcast theme song is “Mesh Shirt” by Mom Jeans off their album “Chub Rub.” Listen to the whole album here or learn more about them here. Follow me @hkpmcgregor, follow Kaarina @kaarinasaurus, and tweet about the podcast using #SecretFeministAgenda.

Secret Feminist Agenda is recorded and produced by Hannah McGregor on the traditional and unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

This week’s episode is the first ever live Secret Feminist Agenda, recorded at the VPL as part of the Vancouver Podcast Festival. Don’t worry though, we all sound great and the sound of laughter/applause really adds something special. I’m considering having an audience at all future recordings. Anyway, I sat down in front of sixty of my closest friends to talk to criminal defence lawyers Gloria Ng and Colleen Elden about charter rights, feminist friendship, and whether the law is a tool that can be bent towards justice or is inherently aligned with the oppressive function of the state! Fun! Links!

The podcast theme song is “Mesh Shirt” by Mom Jeans off their album “Chub Rub.” Listen to the whole album here or learn more about them here. Gloria and Colleen’s theme song is “Criminal” by Fiona Apple.

Secret Feminist Agenda is recorded and produced by Hannah McGregor on the traditional and unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

Okay I obviously don’t normally use this podcast to promote my side hustles but I want very badly to tell you about this project I’ve been working on for the past year and a half, and which launched just yesterday! Refuse: CanLit in Ruins is a collection of essays and poems and dialogues and stories that tackle the contemporary state of Canadian literature, that interrogate the link between CanLit and systemic forms of power and violence, and that imagine our way forward into something else, something better. I’m so proud of this book, and so moved by the generosity and brilliance of the contributors. If you’re interested in literature in general or Canadian literature in particular, you should read it! And because I love the contributors very much, here’s a (selected) list of other work available by them:

Keith Maillard’s new book, Twin Studies, is “an engrossing, timely, and contemporary novel about the bonds between twins, about sexuality and gender fluidity, and about the messy complexities of modern family life”

You can preorder Alicia Elliott’s new book, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, “an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about the treatment of Native people in North America while drawing on intimate details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma”

Sonnet L’Abbé’s most recent chapbook, Anima Canadensis, is available through Junction Books (but it’s limited edition, so go get it now!)

Kai Cheng Thom’s poetry collection, a place called No Homeland, and her children’s book, From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, are both available from Arsenal Pulp Press

Phoebe Wang’s poetry book, Admission Requirements, was deservedly nominated for like a bajillion prizes last year; “the speaker in these poems is engaged in a kind of fieldwork, surveying gardens, communities, and the haphazard cityscape, where the reader is presented with the paradoxes of subsumed histories”

Joshua Whitehead’s Jonny Appleseed was long listed for the Giller Prize and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction (for those outside of Canada, these are big deals!); it’s “a tour-de-force debut novel about a Two-Spirit Indigiqueer young man and proud NDN glitter princess who must reckon with his past when he returns home to his reserve”

I could keep making this list forever but this is already the longest show notes ever but seriously the contributors to this book are so brilliant and talented and you should look them all up!

The podcast theme song is “Mesh Shirt” by Mom Jeans off their album “Chub Rub.” Listen to the whole album here or learn more about them here. Follow me @hkpmcgregor, follow Kaarina @kaarinasaurus, and tweet about the podcast using #SecretFeministAgenda.

Secret Feminist Agenda is recorded and produced by Hannah McGregor on the traditional and unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

Like so many good things, this episode started one way and ended up another. I invited Clayre to chat about singing, and we ended up talking about community and harm and silence and what we do (or don’t do) to feel like we belong. Oh, and we talk about performative allyship, which is so complex a topic I could probably make an entire season about it, but in the meantime here are some LINKS:

I wasn’t sure what to post on the topic of the asking of invasive questions, and how for some people sharing your story becomes the cost of admission, and then I remembered this excerpt from Layli Long Soldier’s incredible poem “WHEREAS”:

WHEREAS we ride to the airport in a van they swivel their necks and shoulders around to speak to me sugar and lilt in their voices something like nurses their nursely kindness through my hair then engage me as comrades in a fight together. Well what we want to know one lady asks is why they don’t have schools there? Her outrage empathy her furrowed brow. There are schools there I reply. Grade schools high schools colleges. But why aren’t there any stores there? There are stores there. Grocery stores convenience stores trading posts whatever what-have-you I explain but it’s here I recognize the break. It’s here we roll along the pavement into hills of conversation we share a ride we share a country but live in alternate nations and here I must tell them what they don’t know or, should I?

It’s been another rough week, folks! But rather than getting bogged down in despair at the seeming indestructibility of the goddamn patriarchy, I’m think about something that brings me a little bit of hope: the generosity of critique, and the possibility of doing a little bit better every day. That’s something we can all manage, and it’s something that makes me feel a little less impotent. You know what else is hopeful? Kaarina’s beautiful meditation on the pleasures of fall. Here are some links!

If you want to know more about the law suit I mentioned, here’s a good summary; if you have the means, donate to the GoFundMe here.

The podcast theme song is “Mesh Shirt” by Mom Jeans off their album “Chub Rub.” Listen to the whole album here or learn more about them here. Follow me @hkpmcgregor, follow Kaarina @kaarinasaurus, and tweet about the podcast using #SecretFeministAgenda.

Secret Feminist Agenda is recorded and produced by Hannah McGregor on the traditional and unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.